Hey Ya'll! How's your week been going so far? Me? Really good. I'm on a photography trip with my photography club (Goldsboro Area Photography Club) and we are in Pennsylvania . One of our days was in Philadelphia for some street photography. Now I'm not a great street photographer but I do love being in the environment and shooting. I guess you could also call it travel photography because we did visit the touristy places like the Liberty Bell, Rocky Statue, and the first continental Congress where the declaration of Independence was signed But other than that it was street. Especially the to and from the places mentioned above. The reason I like travel and street photography because I'm seeing something different. Something out of my element. And a big city is sure that. I'm from a small town in the south not Leica D-Lux 8 familiar with a big city and its hustle and bustle. I like the gritty part of it and the juxtaposition of things. Old and New side by side. Robert my photography sidekick/wingman has been there many times and he was our tour guide for the day. He did a very good job. Getting us to the touristy things and the not touristy things. I like to travel nimble when in the city without a big backpack. I had a shoulder bag if you've seen my kitchen talk videos you know I have a bag I call my purse and it was perfect for my trip to the city. Not too big but big enough to put some stuff in if I got it in the city. This trip it housed a cheesesteak on the way back to the House we were staying in. LOL Don't worry my bag only smelled of cheesesteak for a day or so. 

Here is a video link to Max's Kitchen Gear Talk " Street Photography Philadelphia " . It's on my youtube channel would appreciate if you like and subscribe. Doesn't cost a penny and really helps the channel get to other folks like you.

What I took on our day excursion. Well I had the perfect camera for the trip. I took my newly acquired Leica D-Lux 8. So it was one camera , one lens type of thing. My workshop pals had mostly full frame camera's with larger zooms like 24-105mm which is quite large and heavy for lugging around all day. But that's what they had so it worked. I had the Leica set up on my street setting custom program setting that I had set on it. It's basically shooting in aperture priority , JPEG + RAW and the JPEG is on High Contrast Monochrome. So My screen is in black and white but I always have a RAW full color if I want the scene to be in color. This worked out perfectly .  I did use quite a few of the JPEG's but also there is a lot of color in the city that you can catch. I didn't do any video this day. I had a big SSD external failure that morning and lost a lot of video. That will be another blog's story. But I think it freed me up to think only of photography and not capturing it on video and it was less gear to lug around.  I dressed in subdued colors as much as I could . If you know me I'm an Orange freak and I usually have some shining but this trip it was just my watch band that was sporting the Orange. Of course comfortable clothing especially shoes. I took the ones I normally have my daily hiking in and good thing I did I logged 8.5 miles and over 17000 steps which is very much more than my normal. My dogs were barking a bit afterwards. But other than batteries , phone, Polarizer filter that was it. How did the day go...

It was an overcast day and the temperature was nice. So didn't have to lug around a coat or sweater everywhere just short sleeves all day. I had a photography related T-Shirt on that I even got a compliment on at the Rocky Statue. We did get a couple of sprinkles but nothing that lasted more than a couple of seconds. It was a great day to be walking around the city. We started our day in Reading PA and drove to the city. The traffic was heavy in Philly but that's to be expected. We traveled to a parking spot in the city and started from there. We were only a few blocks from the Liberty bell so we started walking. So we hit the Visitors center then the line at the Liberty bell which didn't last too long about 15min ( the longest line of the day) . We took Ubers when the distance was going to be too long so not to wear anyone out too much. That worked out great. Our tour guide (Robert ) kept us going pretty well. We ate at a Farmers market in the middle of town which was great with lots of people and subjects to photograph. After that we headed to the Love Sign in the middle of town which had a wedding party getting their photo's taken in front of the sign then it was a long walk to the Rocky Statue in front of the Art Museum. Then we took Uber to the South Side for some Geno's Cheesesteak. The one that rode in my Purse for a while. LOL Down around Geno's was some fantastic street photography. A little grungy and not touristy at all just how people lived day to day in Philly. I really enjoyed that part. After eating we headed to Ben Franklin Bridge to shoot the Philly Skyline at Twilight . That worked out great and then we headed back to Reading. It was a long day but a very fun day.

I really enjoyed my day in Philly and would highly recommend it. It may have been my favorite shooting day of the Fall Colors Workshop trip. Maybe because it's so target rich with so much to shoot and not what I normally shoot but I really loved this day on our photography trip. So if you get a chance go. Go! So until next time Get out and shoot!

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